The Twin Hands of God

Here's a news story from the SL Tribune about a father in Cedar Hills, UT who lost eight of 11 in his immediate family, with his wife and two children the most recent to die on Christmas Eve, of all days. They were killed by a drunk driver. Talk about a Christmas rapture turned to sudden horror. I would be cursing Heaven. But not this father. And what incredibly profound thoughts slip out of this LDS father's lips in his moment of grief.

CEDAR HILLS - Three hearses paused outside an LDS chapel here, their presence all too familiar for a family that now had lost eight of its 11 members. The father, Gary Ceran, said he would not shake his fist at heaven, even as he mourned the loss of his wife and two children, who died when an alleged drunken driver plowed into their car on Christmas Eve. Ceran already had lost five other children - three to brain tumors and two to a premature birth. "Only the soul that knows the greatest grief can know the greatest rapture," the father said, his voice quivering as he praised God and testified to a funeral congregation of more than 600 people that his family would reunite after death. Still, the tears fell. "The only way to take grief out of death is to take love out of life," he said.

The concept of an eternal family unit seems to be of tremendous comfort to this Job-like saint. My prayer is that this father gets some of that rapture he speaks about sometime in this life, and not given right before the rug is pulled out or in the next life. It just may take a miracle dealt from the other hand of God.